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7/29/2019 Blue Reflected Starlight

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Earth, one Cosmic speck among the indefinity

Extracts From Letters To A Personal Correspondent

I

Blue Reflected Starlight

As it departed toward the vastness of interstellar space, the Voyager 1interplanetary spacecraft in 1990(ce) transmitted an image of Earth from adistance of over four billion miles; the most distant image of Earth we humanbeings have ever seen. The Earth, our home, was a bluish dot; a mere Cosmicspeck among the indefinity, visible only because of reflected starlight and - inthe solar panorama imaged by Voyager on that February day - of no observedimportance. One speck in one galaxy in a vast Cosmos of billions upon billionsof galaxies, and one speck that would most probably appear, to a non-terran,less interesting than the rings of Saturn, just visible from such a distance.

Yet we human beings, en masse, continue to live in a manner which not onlybelies our Cosmic insignificance but which militates against the empathy, thehumility, that such a Cosmic perspective can and does engender. Thus do weindividually, as well as collectively, have pride in our lives, our deeds, our'accomplishments', just as we continue to exploit not only other human beingsbut the Earth itself: and exploit for pleasure, or profit, or from some desire orbecause of some cause or some faith or some ideology or some ideation webelieve in or support. Either believing or asserting, in our hubris, that we'know' - that we 'understand' - what we are doing, or reckless of consequences

because unable or unwilling to control our desires; unable or unwilling tocontrol ourselves or our addiction to some cause or some faith or some ideologyor some ideation.

Thus does the suffering we here inflict on other life - human and otherwise -continue. Thus does our human-wrought destruction continue, as if we are inthrall consciously or otherwise to the ideation that our planet, and its life

David Myatt - Blue Reflected Starlight


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including other humans, are some kind of 'resource', a means to supply ourneeds or a way to satiate our desires. So easy, so very easy, to injure, hate, andkill. So easy, so very easy, to satiate the desire to be in control. So very easy toplace ourselves first; even easier to have our feelings, our desires, subsume,overcome, whatever consideration we might give, or previously had given, toothers and to other life. So easy, so very easy, to make excuses - consciously or

otherwise - to ourselves, and to others, for what we have done or what we areabout to do; for always there is the excuse of self-interest or self-preservation,or the excuse of desires or some cause or some faith or some ideology or someideation. So easy, so very easy, to spew forth words.

It is as if we terrans, en masse, have forgotten, keep forgetting, or have neverdiscovered the wisdom that what involves too many words - and especially whatinvolves or requires speeches, rhetoric, propaganda, dogma - is what obscuresempathy and thus the numinosity that empathy reveals; the numinositypresented to us by the pathei-mathos of our human past; manifest to us - and

living now - in the way of living of those whose personal pathei-mathos - whosepersonal experience of suffering, death, destruction, hate, violence, of too manykillings - has forever changed them. The numinous revelation of kindness, ofhumility, of gentleness, of love, of compassion; of being able to restrain,control, ourselves; of being able to comprehend our small, insignificant, placein the indefinity of the Cosmos, bringing as this comprehension does anunderstanding of the importance, the numinosity, that is a shared and loyallove between two people: and revealing as this does the Cosmic unimportanceof such wars and conflicts and such brutality as have blighted our terranhistory.

As I know from my outr experience of life - especially my forty years ofextremism, hubris, and selfishness; my terms of imprisonment, my experiencewith gangs, with people of bad intentions and with those of good intentions - itreally is as if we terran men have, en masse, learnt nothing from the past fouror five thousand years. For the uncomfortable truth is that we, we men, are andhave been the ones causing, needing, participating in, those wars andconflicts. We - not women - are the cause of most of the suffering, death,destruction, hate, violence, brutality, and killing, that has occurred and whichis still occurring, thousand year upon thousand year; just as we are the oneswho seek to be - or who often need to be - prideful and 'in control'; and the ones

who through greed or alleged need or because of some ideation have saught toexploit not only other human beings but the Earth itself. We are also masters ofdeception; of the lie. Cunning with our excuses, cunning in persuasion, andskilled at inciting hatred and violence. And yet we men have also shownourselves to be, over thousands of years, valourous; capable of noble, selfless,deeds. Capable of doing what is fair and restraining ourselves from doing whatis unethical. Capable of a great and a gentle love.



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This paradoxy continues to perplex me. And I have no answers as to how wemight change, reform, this paradoxical of ours, and so - perhaps -balance the suffering-causing masculous with the empathic muliebral and yetsomehow in some way retain that which is the genesis of the valourous. And ifwe cannot do this, if we cannot somehow reform ourselves, can we terrans as a

species survive, and do we deserve to?

Are we, we men here on this planet, capable of restraining and reformingourselves, en masse, such that we allow ourselves, and are given, no excuses ofwhatever kind from whatever source for our thousand year upon thousand yearof violence against women? Are we capable of such a reformation of our kindthat such reprehensible violence by cowardly men becomes only historical fact?

Are we, here on this planet, capable of restraining and reforming ourselves, enmasse, such that we allow ourselves no excuses of whatever kind from whatever

source for wars, armed conflicts, brutality against perceived or stated'enemies', and murderous intervention? Such a reformation of ourselves thatwars, armed conflicts, such brutality, and such interventions, become onlyhistorical fact?

Or are we fated, under Sun, to squabble and bicker and hate and kill anddestroy and exploit this planet and its life until we, a failed species, leave onlydead detritic traces of our hubris?

Or will we, or some of us, betake ourselves away to colonize faraway non-terranplaces, taking with us our unreformed paradoxical to perchance againdespoil, destroy, as some of our kind once betook themselves away to foreverchange parts of this speck of blue reflected starlight which gave us thisfortunity of Life?

Yet again I admit I have no answers.

David Myatt2012

The above text is part of a letter, sent in November 2012, to a personal correspondent in response

to her reply to an earlier letter of mine, part of which earlier letter is given below, under the title

A Slowful Learning, Perhaps.



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Addendum: Snippets of Etymological Joy

indefinity: var. indifinity. Unmeasurable; immeasurable; endlessness; of no known limit. [Derived

from indefinitec.1600]

fortunity: a propitious occurrence or opportunity; happenstance. [Derived from French fortunit

c.1450] Contrasted with infortunity.

masculous: certain traits, abilities, and qualities conventionally and historically associated with

men. [Derived from Latin masculusc.1600]

muliebral: certain traits, abilities, and qualities conventionally and historically associated with

women. [Derived from Latin muliebrisc. 1650]

numinous:spiritual; sacred; divine; beautiful. [Derived from Latin numen c. 1650]

Image credit: NASA & JPL (Voyager 1)

II

A Slowful Learning, Perhaps

"And what the dead had no speech for, when living,They can tell you, being dead: the communication

Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living." [1]

Perhaps it is incumbent upon us to now celebrate, remember, transcribe, onlythe kind, the gentle, the loving, the compassionate, the happy, and thepersonal, things - and those who have done them - and not the many thingsthat have caused suffering, death, destruction, and inflicted violence on others.

For, so often it seems, we human beings have and have had for millennia asomewhat barbaric propensity to celebrate, to remember, to transcribe, ourseeming triumphs of personal pride and of victory over others - be such otherssome declared enemy or some designated foe - always or almost alwaysforgetting the suffering, the deaths, the destruction, that such a seeming, andalways transient, victory over others has always involved, and always or almostalways forgetting the suffering, the hurt, the unhappiness, that our selfish



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prideful desire to triumph, to succeed, causes in someone or some manysomewhere.

For millennia so many have been fixated on either our selves - our pride, oursuccess, our needs, our desires - or on the pride, the success, the needs, thesecurity, the prosperity, we have assigned to or we accepted as a necessary

part of some ideal, some entity, some supra-personal abstraction.

Thus, anciently, in the name of some Pharaoh or some Caesar, or some King, orsome Chief, or some leader, or some religious faith, or on behalf of someinterpretation of some religious faith, we sallied forth to war or to battle,causing suffering, death, destruction, and doing violence, to others. Invadinghere; invading there. Attacking here; interfering there. Defending this, ordefending that. Destroying this, or destroying that.

Thus, latterly, in the name of some country, or some nation, or some political

ideal, or some cause, or on behalf of some-thing supra-personal we believed in,we sallied for to war or did deeds that caused suffering, death, destruction, andinflicted violence on others. Defending this, or attacking that. Invading here;or colonizing there. Dreaming of or determined to find glory. Always, always,using the excuse that our cause, our ideal, our country, our nation, oursecurity, our prosperity, our 'way of life', our 'destiny', hallowed our deeds;believing that such suffering, death, destruction as we caused, and the

violence we inflicted on others, were somehow justified because 'we' were rightand 'they' our foes, were wrong or in some way not as 'civilized' or as 'just' as ussince 'their cause' or their 'way of life' or way of doing things was, according tous, reprehensible.

Whose voice now tells the story of all or even most of those who suffered andthose who died in conflicts four thousand years ago? Three thousand, twothousand, years ago?

It is as if we, as a sentient species, have learnt nothing from the past fourthousand years. Nothing from the accumulated pathei-mathos of those who didsuch deeds or who experienced such deeds or who suffered because of suchdeeds. Learnt nothing from four thousand years of the human culture that suchpathei-mathos created and which to us is manifest - remembered, celebrated,

transcribed - in Art, literature, memoirs, music, poetry, myths, legends, andoften in the ethos of a numinous ancestral awareness or in those sometimesmystical allegories that formed the basis for a spiritual way of life.

All we have done is to either (i) change the names of that which or those whomwe are loyal to and for which or for whom we fight, kill, and are prepared to diefor, or (ii) given names to such new causes as we have invented in order to give



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us some identity or some excuse to fight, endure, triumph, preen, or die for.Pharaoh, Caesar, Pope, Defender of the Faith, President, General, PrimeMinister; Rome, Motherland, Fatherland, The British Empire, Our GreatNation, North, South, our democratic way of life. It makes little difference; thesame loyalty; the same swaggering; the same hubris; the same desire, or thesame obligation or coercion, to participate and fight.

How many human beings, for instance, have been killed in the last hundredyears in wars and conflicts? Wars and conflicts hallowed, or justified, bysomeone or some many somewhere. One hundred million dead? More? Howmany more hundreds of millions have suffered because of such modern warsand conflicts?

It is almost as if we - somehow flawed - need something beyond our personallives to vivify us; to excite us; to test ourselves; to identify with. As if we cannotescape the barbarian who lies in wait, within; ready to subsume us once again

so that we sally forth on behalf of some cause, some leader, or some ideal, orsome abstraction, or as part of some crusade. As if we human beings, asSophocles intimated over two thousand years ago, are indeed, by nature, andhave remained sometimes honourable and sometimes dishonourable beings [2],able to sometimes be rational, thinking, beings, but also unable to escape ourdesire, our need, our propensity, to not only be barbaric but to try to justify toourselves and to others our need for, and even our enjoyment of, suchbarbarity.

Or perhaps the stark truth is that it is we men who are flawed or incompleteand who thus need to change. As if we, we men, have not yet evolved enough tobe able to temper, to balance, our harsh masculous nature with the muliebral;a balance which would see us become almost a new species; one which has,having finally sloughed off the suffering-causing hubriatic patriarchal attitudesof the past, learnt from the pathei-mathos of our ancestors, from the pathei-mathos of our human culture, born and grown and nurtured as our humanculture was, has been, and is by over four thousand years of human-causedsuffering. A learning from and of the muliebral, for the wyrdful thread whichruns through, which binds, our human pathei-mathos is a muliebral one: thethread of kindness, of gentleness, of love, of compassion; of empathy; of thepersonal over and above the supra-personal.

A learning that reveals to us a quite simple truth; that what is wrong is causingor contributing to suffering, and that, with (at least in my admittedly fallibleopinion) one exception and one exception only [3] we cannot now (again, atleast in my admittedly fallible opinion) morally justify intentionally causing orcontributing to the suffering of any living being.



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How many more centuries - or millennia - will we need? To learn, to change, tocease to cause such suffering as we have for so many millennia caused.

My own life - of four decades of suffering-causing extremism and personalselfishness - is, most certainly, just one more example of our manful capacity tobe stupid and hubriatic. To fail to learn from the pathei-mathos of human

culture, even though I personally had the advantages of a living in diversecultures and of a 'classical education', and thus was taught or became familiarwith the insights of Lao Tzu, of Siddhartha Gautama, of Jesus of Nazareth, ofSappho, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Cicero, Livy, Marcus Aurelius, Dante Alighieri,

Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, TS Eliot, EM Forster, and so many others; andeven though I had the opportunity to discover, to participate in, and thus felt,the numinosity, the learning, inherent in so many other things, from plainchantto Byrd, Dowland, Palestrina, Tallis, to JS Bach and beyond. And yet, despiteall these advantages, all these chances to learn, to evolve, I remainedhubriatic; selfish, arrogant, in thrall to ideations, and like so many men

somewhat addicted to the joy, to the pleasures, of kampf, placing pursuit ofthat pleasure, or some cause, or some ideation, or my own needs, before lovedones, family, friends. Only learning, only finally and personally learning, after adeath too far.

Is that then to be our human tragedy? That most of us cannot or will not learn -that we cannot change - until we, personally, have suffered enough or haveencountered, or experienced, or caused, one death too many?

David MyattNovember 2012

Notes

[1] TS Eliot, Little Gidding

[2] As Sophocles expressed it:

,

There exists much that is strange, yet nothing

Has more strangeness than a human being

Beyond his own hopes, his cunning

In inventive arts he who arrives



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Now with dishonour, then with chivalry

Antigone, v.334, vv.365-366

[3] The one exception is personal honour; the valourous use of force in apersonal situation. As mentioned in The Way of Pathei-Mathos - A Philosophical

Compendiary:

" [The] balancing of compassion of the need not to cause suffering by and is perhaps most obvious on that particularoccasion when it may be judged necessary to cause suffering toanother human being. That is, in honourable self-defence. For it isnatural part of our reasoned, fair, just, human nature to defendourselves when attacked and (in the immediacy of the personalmoment) to valorously, with chivalry, act in defence of someoneclose-by who is unfairly attacked or dishonourably threatened or is

being bullied by others, and to thus employ, if our personaljudgement of the circumstances deem it necessary, lethal force.

This use of force is, importantly, crucially, restricted by theindividual nature of our judgement, and by the individual nature ofour authority to such personal situations of immediate self-defenceand of valorous defence of others, and cannot be extended beyondthat, for to so extend it, or attempt to extend it beyond the immediacyof the personal moment of an existing physical threat, is an arrogantpresumption an act of which negates the fair, the human,presumption of innocence of those we do not personally know, wehave no empathic knowledge of, and who present no direct,immediate, personal, threat to us or to others nearby us.

Such personal self-defence and such valorous defence of another in apersonal situation are in effect a means to restore the natural balancewhich the unfair, the dishonourable, behaviour of others upsets. Thatis, such defence fairly, justly, and naturally in the immediacy of themoment corrects their error ofresulting from their bad (theirrotten) ; a rotten character evident in their lack of the virtue,the skill, of. For had they possessed that virtue, and if

their character was not bad, they would not have undertaken such adishonourable attack."

cc David Myatt 2012



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